


This love

by imamessofawriter



Series: Pieces of 1989 [6]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Aged Up Percy Jackson Character(s), Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, Depression, M/M, Making Up, Mental Health Issues, Nico and Will work out through their problems, Nico di Angelo is Bad at Feelings, Past Relationship(s), Platonic Relationships, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reconciliation, References to Depression, Running Away, Therapy, Toxic Relationship, from lovers to friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:47:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24857095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imamessofawriter/pseuds/imamessofawriter
Summary: When you’re young, you just run but you come back… to what you need. - This Love by Taylor Swift.After a nasty breakup, both Will and Nico left camp half-blood and New Rome, running off their separate ways. Jumping from cities, relationships, and life, they never expected to run into each other again.
Relationships: Nico di Angelo/Will Solace
Series: Pieces of 1989 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/406318
Kudos: 24





	1. Nico

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first time writing for the PJO fandom. I have recently finished reading both the PJO and HOO series, I am waiting for the tower of Nero to read the TOA series, but I do know bits and pieces of the plot. Solangelo is one of my fav ships, but I think Rick should’ve written and developed them better and gave us more to work with. I was planning to make this a one-shot no longer than 4000 words, but this fic got away from me and I decided to add Will’s POV and write an epilogue.
> 
> On that note, I haven't written any fanfic in almost a year, I mainly use it as an outlet for myself and with the pandemic going on and a lot of shit I actually feel the need to write something angsty to get it out of my system. This fic is purely self-indulgent, and the characters may seem a bit OOC, but given the fact the characters are aged up, they are bound to act differently than canon for reasons you will understand once you read the fic.
> 
> This fic is written in two parts and was inspired by the bridge of the song This Love by Taylor swift. The first part covers Nico’s POV of things while the second part covers Will’s POV. I am no expert on mental health issues and most of the information I got is from the internet, so if I do get something wrong, please tell me. There are also bound to be many typos so please bear with me. Proof reading this whole thing was a nightmare.
> 
> Warnings: Aged-up characters. Slightly-AU?. Angst. OOC. Depressive themes. Mentions of mental illness.
> 
> Word count: Part 1- 9097 words; Part 2- 10535
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own the song or the characters.

The sun was setting low on the horizon, the wind a soft breeze against him. The clear blue water of the isle of wight bay nature park was turning into a soft hue, the sky turning slightly pink. All around him people were going about their own business, a few children playing with toys while their parents were packing up, and couples appeared to be taking a romantic stroll through the park.

Nico found an empty bench to sit in, strangers throwing at him awry glances. He didn’t blame them. It was an extremely long day, and he looked like he was about to drop dead. It didn’t help that he was covered in dirt and had been running for a while now, monster attacks usually left him like that. He felt a headache building up and his body ached in pain, he was just trying to do his job, but when was life easy for a demigod.

He had to throw away his black leather jacket in the trash a few yards back because one of the sleeves was completely burned and it was riddled in holes; it was unsalvageable. What was it now, his fifth jacket in three months. He had lost count of how many times he had to replace his jackets. He made a mental note to go shopping for more jackets and stock them up in his closet.

After losing his first jacket, a slightly oversized aviator jacket, back then while transporting the Athena Parthenos, he had replaced it with a black leather bomber jacket. But that was lost when he helped Apollo in his quest to free the oracle of Delphi and defeat the Roman emperor Nero. Later on, Will Solace got him a new jacket, a studded leather biker jacket, in black as usual. Nico had cherished the jacket and only worn it on several occasions and dubbed it his _formal jacket_.

However, like most things, that jacket got lost. Not lost, but Nico had folded that jacket and hid it deep in his closet in his room in the underworld. He and Will had dated for four years before all good things came to an end. By the time they were eighteen things had begun to change, they both had changed, and Will was changing for the worse. In hindsight, Nico should’ve seen the red flags, he should’ve helped, should’ve spoken out. 

He had always thought they would share the same future, even if their paths were slightly different. Will wanted to go to med school and pursue a career as a doctor. Nico, on the other hand, wasn’t sure of what to do with his future, but he knew he wanted to settle in New Rome at least. They contemplated what they wanted, and they knew that they wanted to stay together, work through the current rough patch in their relationship.

They both agreed to live in New Rome, where Nico would run errands for Hades, while Will studied in UC Berkeley. It would be at least a 30-minute drive between campus and New Rome. It was their first time living together alone. Sure they had sleepovers in the Hades cabin back at Camp Half-Blood, but it wasn’t the same as sharing a space. Just the two of them. 

That arrangement caused a strain in their relationship as if they were trying to dodge invisible bullets fired from every direction. Will’s mortal friends did not like Nico, while Nico’s roman friends looked down at Will. They both learned to ignore the hate, Nico had learned that the hard way growing up the way he did. But somewhere along the line, the shield began to crack.

The downside of living in the San Francisco area was that they were in the backyard of monsters. Their dates in the city getting crashed by several monsters. The monsters came for Nico, never Will, which made Nico guilty. Will had to reassure him multiple times that it was fine.

It was not fine.

They were living together, closer than ever, but it seemed that they were so far away from each other. Will slowly started to spend some time with mortals. And Nico didn’t blame him, but sometimes the excuses were stupid that they began making Nico feel as if he was doing something wrong. Looking at it now, he wishes he noticed how empty Will’s eyes seemed, how tired he came after spending the whole day with his mortal friends.

But Nico did nothing, he didn’t pry. Work started to pile up for him, and he was going on more and more missions for both camps and his father. He would sometimes disappear for days without any contact. 

Will was slowly losing his patience, and Nico started to notice that what were subtle changes in Will’s behavior were suddenly evident. He began spouting ‘doctor’s orders’ and whatnot whenever Nico had come back from a job, but when Nico was staying around and purposefully not taking care of himself, Will seemed to turn a blind eye. 

And when Will started to forget simple things like doing the dishes or buying groceries, Nico chalked it up to stress of being a pre-med student. Sometimes they would argue about it, and Will would insist that he had done the dishes or that Nico had actually bought their groceries the other day when in fact, Nico had been in the underworld for the past few days.

Through time, it seemed that Nico had taken the role of the caretaker. He asked both camps to cut down on his jobs. He had thought that if he had spent some more time at home, helping Will out and taking care of him, then Will is going to love him for it. It’s what you do for the person you love, it’s what he read in books and saw in movies, it’s what Will did to him when they first got together. Someone had to make sacrifices for the relationship to work, and Nico wanted the relationship to work. He couldn’t imagine life without his love.

Things started taking a turn for the worse, more arguing and more fighting. Nico had was trying his best to be patient; if Will could do it, then so can he. It seemed that stress had kept pilling up on Will, and his boyfriend was getting really snappy about things. The calm and collected Will Solace, snappy? He never would’ve expected it. It came to him as a slight shock when will snapped at a woman, calling her a bad mother because her 8-month-old baby was crying loudly, even though it is quite apparent that the lady was a first-time mother.

Nico apologized to the woman for Will’s behavior and tried to de-escalate any encounter that had left Will pissed off and ready to place a rhyming curse on people. When Will had screamed into a pillow or would should profanities at the sunlight that escaped through the curtain in the morning, Nico thought to intervene. He needed to take the stress off Will’s shoulders.

He consoled his friends and decided to listen to Annabeth’s advice and take Will on a simple relaxing date. It was in the middle of November, midterms were over, but finals were about to start, and those were going to be the most stressful two weeks in his life. Nico had decided to take his boyfriend on a simple picnic at the golden gate park. They had found a secluded area in the strawberry hill where people won’t see them, who cared if they were breaking the law to sit there. It helped that it was in the dead of winter and that there weren’t many tourists around. 

They sat by a small body of water, a naiad greeted Will but ran away from Hades's son. Will, who usually chatted with the nature spirits, waved the naiad off and sat plopped down on the picnic blanket. He had complained the whole time about wasting precious time that could be used for studying, never about how much shadow traveling without rest could hurt Nico.

It’s all that Will seemed to do, complaining and being an overall shitty person. Nico let most of the remarks slide, he kept telling himself that Will is stressed, he is tired, that’s why. It’s why Will throws these awful insults; sometimes, they always come when Will is studying and having barely slept in days. Nico would joke it off and pretend he wasn’t hurt by it. He needed to be strong and shake it off, that’s what he kept telling himself.

They spent most of the day hidden between the bushes trying to relax. Nico had turned on their portable heater to warm the area for them, and they huddled next to each other as they drank hot chocolate. The conversation was mostly carried out by Nico, who was enthusiastically talking about the new books he had read in the past month. Will only hummed in reply and seemed to be scowling at nothing, Nico noted the heat that radiated from Will alone, and slowed down his talking and tried to keep his hand gestures to a minimum.

The small picnic was going well, as well as it could be with one grumpy, completely stressed-out teenager until they were attacked by three cyclopses. That seemed to be the final straw before Will had broken down and lost it. “For once in your life, could you not cause anyone trouble” he yelled after the monsters were taken care of.

“EXCUSE ME!”

“I’ve been having it up till here, NICO,” Will shouted out, placing his hand above his head in a gesture showing how annoyed and angry he is, “Whenever we go out, we always get attacked by monster’s, and it always seems to be your FAULT. I want to spend time and study for finals because guess what some of us want to have a future, but NOOOO, the dark lord wants to go on a picnic in the middle of NOVEMBER.”

“Well, excuse me for trying to help you relax,” he countered, irritated. He had fought the three cyclopses by himself while Will stayed where he is, and when the fight was over, he didn't ask Nico how he was or if he was injured. Nothing. “You have been so stressed out lately I thought to do something nice for you, to help you get rid of all that stress.”

“NICE? NICE?” Will raged, pointing an accusatory finger at Nico, “you go on unnecessary missions and decide to pop out in the middle of the night, waking me up in the process and making me lose sleep, and not only that, but I have to spend a lot of energy healing your wounds because you can’t seem to take yourself to the infirmary and let people look over you.”

“That’s because you always insisted that I come to you whenever I am wounded,” Nico defended, “I can remember the last time I went to someone not you, and you had insulted their work.”

“This whole thing would’ve been easier without this demigod bullshit,” Will ranted bitterly, “I actually can hang out with my mortal friend without worrying about some apocalypse or someone dying, but if I go with another demigod to someplace outside of camp borders it is doomsday and–”

Nico felt a rush of emotions, he felt hot as if he was actually steaming with anger. He clenched his shaking fists and counted to ten, over and over again until he calmed down. The words and insults that Will kept throwing around became silent screams in Nico’s ear as he became numb while his world came crashing down. He didn’t know if his mood was causing the sky to darken to black or whether it was the sun setting and night coming. 

It all felt too much, and Nico did the only thing he knew. He yelled at Will, his voice cracking, his shoulders hunched, making him feel small, the grass beneath his feet dying and turning to a black mess. He felt like a cornered animal being betrayed by the person he trusted the most, “if that’s how you feel then you should’ve said something, I don’t need your PITY, you could’ve broken up with me ages ago and it would’ve been fine.”

Will seemed a bit taken back by that statement, but he was also red with rage and pent up stress, ready to bite back. “Don’t worry, I will spare you the trouble,” Nico whispered, and took to the shadow’s, leaving Will staring at the empty spot a bit confused. That night, Nico did not return to their shared apartment. As a matter of fact, he only returned when he knew Will was at university, and that was to gather his things.

He lived in his father’s palace for the next few months, busing himself with the smallest of tasks. Anything to take his mind of Will. It wasn’t like any of their misunderstandings when they were younger. It wasn’t like when Nico had lost his temper and ran off to the Hades cabin and locked himself in there for days over a misunderstanding that was sometimes the result of his anxiety overacting or miscommunication on the other person’s part.

Nico di Angelo was having his first heartbreak.

Every single time he set foot in New Rome, he could always hear them, the voices, the sneers that people sent his way. He just lost the love of his life, and he doesn't know what to do, so he did what he knows best; he became petty and retaliated. Every time he picked a fight with someone, and it had gotten so bad to the point that Hazel threatened to have him on probation every time he is in New Rome.

Sometimes he would ask about Will, he knew the other teen was not in a great shape after the breakup. His heart broke when he heart about how Will was doing, but he did nothing about it. Whenever someone asked him about it, he just shrugged and pretended not to hear. A few months later, he heard that things have been turning bad for Will, dropping out of school, selling their apartment, and losing his job in the infirmary. Losing his credibility as the best healer in both camps.

 _Good._ Nico had thought at first. He was bitter and angry and quite blindsided by what had happened. He had allowed himself to be happy, he forgot the hardships and misery that awaited all children of Hades. He can hear Akhlys words in his head, repeating over and over again like a broken record.

He was wallowing in self-pity for a long time that Hades had to intervene. The god pulled Jason Grace from Elysium and asked him to watch over Nico as a companion since his son seemed keen on avoiding human interactions as much as possible. At first, Nico seemed annoyed by that, sure he and Jason were somewhat friends before the son of Jupiter died, and Nico would request to visit the dead teen once every six months, but that didn’t mean anything. 

Jason wasn’t there to see Nico fall in love with Will. He wasn’t there to watch Nico experience what he considered a lifetime of happiness only for it to slip between his fingers. Nico had remained tight-lipped about his problems for a while before he broke down one night crying. He told Jason everything. The three days in the infirmary, them hanging out as friends, developing a crush, falling in love, his first kiss, his first time, living together, and falling apart.

Nico knew he could count on Jason to keep his secrets. He was the first to know of Nico’s sexuality, even though it was against his will. Still, Jason respected Nico’s wishes and didn’t speak about it. He also knew that Jason didn’t like to gossip about people’s personal lives. The son of Jupiter became his best friend and confidant, who gave some sound advice.

One day, Nico asked his closest friends to meet him in New Rome for a private meeting. He told them that he wants to semi-retire, he wants to go away from the demigod life and do some soul searching and find himself. He was willing to do critical errands and limited each camp to 3 errands per year. 

He then began slowly distancing himself from everyone, only keeping in constant touch with his sister, Percy, who was like a brother to him. And strangely enough, he was regularly writing letters to the Stoll brothers, who always had his back before and after they knew of his heritage.

He gradually lost touch with his many friends, as a result of no longer seeing them face to face. He started by writing them weekly letters that turned into monthly before becoming sparse letters that he sent every now and then.

A year after the breakup and with Jason’s help, Nico had decided to put himself back on the dating field. It first started as random hookups with strangers much to Jason’s dismay. 

He had hated it, but he told himself to keep going, anything just to forget about one Will Solace. Soon he began to forget what it felt like to be touched by the sun, and rough hand replaced the gentle hands that he had gotten used to. Cheap cologne replaced the smell of antiseptic that he had gotten used to. He no longer felt the urge to blurt out Will’s name in a random stranger’s beds.

And it had felt good. He felt empowered. He was no longer associating love and romance with a certain son of Apollo.

His first long term relationship after the break up was with a mortal in Seattle. They were both 21, and his new boyfriend had just graduated from university. The relationship had lasted eight months before they had broken up. It was Nico who had dumped the mortal, “it’s not you, it’s me,” he had explained, “but I did enjoy this relationship.”

His mortal lover had kissed him softly, a smile on his lips as they parted on good terms and wished Nico well. The demigod returned the smile, even if it was small. He didn’t have the heart to admit that as he lay in bed at night, he pictured someone else next to him. 

Oh, how he tossed and turned, and all that kept flickering through his mind was tousled blond hair and freckles on tanned skin.

And the cycle went on and on. Nico felt like he could turn his life into a movie, minus the demigod stuff obviously. He kept jumping from relationship to another, never in the same city. He had set an unspoken rule, a hundred miles between each relationship, at least. Some had lasted 2 or 4 months while others had lasted a bit longer. They were all with mortals—no demigod business involved what so ever. 

Every time he felt content in a relationship, happy with where he is, there was this nagging feeling in the back of his head telling him that something is wrong. He knew that he was over Will, in his heart, he knew that whatever love he felt for Will was not the same type of love he felt with all of his boyfriends. Sure some of his relationships were built on lust, others on admiration, but none had the same love he felt for Will. He supposes that is because Will was his first love, and it was an innocent type of love.

His last relationship lasted about a little over a year. He met this clear-sighted mortal, Aiden, in Newport, Rhode Island. The man had brown hair and heterochromatic eyes, one brown the other gray. He had a slight tan due to the high summer sun and the time spent outside on the beach. He had been running from some harpies that apparently had gotten annoyed at his poking and prodding. He had approached Nico, with scratches all over his arm, and pointed at the stygian iron sword hanging at his hips, “Is that a real sword? and can it deal with those weird looking chicken ladies?”

To say that Nico was baffled was an understatement. After saving Aiden and explaining to him that it was best not to ask questions, the young adult passed out suddenly, and the stranger had tended to him as a ‘repayment.’ Soon they had dated, and Nico felt himself fall in love all over again. 

But this one was different. Nico had never had the urge to compare Aiden to any of his exes, and certainly not to Will. Nico adored Aiden with all of his heart and thought about what a future with the mortal would look like. They had many many similarities, including almost identical senses of humor and an old obsession with Mythomagic.

Only once, after he and Aiden had broken up, did he compare Aiden to Will. Whatever it was that Aiden had done, Nico would remember the time that Will had done the same thing, and would think about how his reaction is different. 

Of course it was different. They were 14 and 15 respectively when he and Will got together. They had fought in two wars in the span of two years, though the second war was a bit milder as it was contained much faster, and there were fewer deaths. Nico had also survived Tartarus and was still recovering. He had been rescued back in June and had entered a relationship in December. 

If he had allowed himself proper time to heal, maybe things would’ve been different. Now that he was older and more mature and had processed all the trauma that he went through, he cringed at his reactions to certain stuff as a teenager. He had taken the whole ‘angsty vibes’ to a whole new level, and for some reason, it felt like some of his bad habits were being encouraged by the people around him. 

That year was the happiest in Nico’s life, but it seemed that the fates did not want him to be satisfied. There weren’t as many monster attacks, and he had someone who had loved him unconditionally. However, Aiden sometimes seemed a bit hesitant about Nico’s otherworldly powers as much as he was fascinated by them. 

Nico was happy. His life seems to be stable, and he lives close to New York and can actually visit Percy and Annabeth on the weekends. He loved living with Aiden, something about the domesticity excited him to a certain degree.

Aiden didn’t crack under the pressure of knowing about the mythical world or that he was dating a demigod. Quite the opposite. He was fascinated by them and willing to adopt some of their rituals into his daily life, like giving offerings at every meal and actually meeting the Jackson family. He and Aiden were chilling at their home - an actual house and not an apartment - when they started talking about life. 

It was quiet and fairly normal. Their conversation somehow ended up about their relationship, and they had both decided to just end it and remain friends. Nico smiled softly as he kissed Aiden on last time. 

.

Nico shook his head and got out of his stupor. It’s been a month since he and Aiden had broken up. He didn’t shed a tear and was actually fine with the breakup even though Jason kept nagging him about it. Why is he suddenly remembering all of this? Why is he thinking about Will?

He had remained in touch with Aiden, had encouraged him to date someone else. He thinks something is wrong with him, and he should be upset and not encourage his ex-boyfriend to date someone so soon after they had broken up. He kept thinking about how he acted after the end of each relationship, but all of his thoughts revert back to Will.

 _Idiot_. He curses himself as he smacks his head, pissed at himself. He barely gave Will Solace a thought in the past year. He hadn’t seen the blonde demigod in over eight years. He knew Will Solace was still alive as he hadn’t encountered his soul in the underworld.

Nico hated it. 

He hated that relationship.

He hated Will.

He hated the permanent mark that relationship had left in him.

He hated that smile. The way his eyes would crinkle—those dimples.

He missed those warm hands that would hold him when he was upset.

He missed counting those damned freckles.

He misses the good moments when he felt unstoppable.

He misses Will Solace.

A lot.

The sun had already set, the sky is dark with a few stars here and there. How long had he been sitting on the bench? The number of people around had been getting less and less. He could hear sirens in the distance, but he was too exhausted to really care. He heard footsteps approaching him, and he looked up, ready to attack or run, whichever option seemed better at the moment.

He gasped in surprise. Rubbing his eyes and pinching his arms to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. That the person in front of him was real.

“Hey, Sunshine,” Will had greeted. He seemed older, more mature. A quiet melancholy aura surrounded him. He had grown a bit taller, standing at 6’ 4” (193 cm). He still had that surfer body but looked less like a lanky cat. He was wearing a pair of jeans and an obnoxious yellow hoodie, a messenger back across his shoulders. He still looked like a hippy, though he seems to have lost some of his natural tan and his hair looks much more presentable.

“What are you doing here?” Nico sighed, he was not ready to deal with this.

“Can I start with saying sorry?” Will fidgeted, he also seems to be surprised by the turn of events. Nico raised an eyebrow. He was feeling a bit on edge, there are a million ways this conversation can go to, and he doesn’t have the energy for it.

“I’m sorry for being an ass to you back then,” Will continued, shuffling slightly, perhaps a new habit that he developed when he was nervous. “We were both going through some shit, and we were selfish. I was selfish, and I had taken it out on you, and I know no amount of apologies will make up for what I did but let me apologize, and I don’t know what else to say because to be honest I never thought I was going to see you again, I really didn’t expect to see you here, I came because of some request along with some other demigods and some local nymphs said–”

Nico looked at Will questioningly. The blonde seemed to go on a rant but suddenly stopped. His eyebrows creased as he eyed Nico up and down. The dark-haired male hated that assessing look as if he was that 14-year-old who was going to fade into the shadows.

“Oh gods, you are hurt,” Will stated in shock, slapping his forehead, “and here I was rambling.” He fished a square of ambrosia out of his bag and handed it to Nico, “I’m so stupid, I meet you for the first time in ages and forget that the nymphs said there was an injured demigod nearby.”

Nico hesitantly grabs the square and scarfs it down, he could feel his body heal and gain back some energy. He silently curses the nymphs for informing his ex-boyfriend and first love about his predicament.

“So…” Nico began, not sure of how to carry on.

“umm…yeah, this is a bit awkward,” Will sighed and sat on the other end of the bench. They both sat there in silence, looking at anything but each other. Nico glared a hole in the ground and fiddled with his skull ring. The silence seemed to drag out, none of the adults wanted to be the first one to talk about it.

“You know,” Will began, his shoulders hunched, and he looked like he was about to run away as far as he can. Nico didn’t blame him, he looked like a serial killer, and he had a gloomy air about him that would make anyone in their right minds run away. “For a while, I thought you would come back, but you cleared out the apartment, and I knew it wasn’t like the other times, where we would avoid each other for days before making up. You were gone for good.”

Nico sat there, not saying anything. How was he supposed to reply to that, sure he didn’t have proper closure to a relationship that ended a little over eight years ago. Hell, he had thought about that relationship for a while and came to realize its stupidity. Who thought it was a good idea for kids to be in a relationship, and expect that relationship to be stable and healthy and to last forever. 

“I realized how dependent I was on you,” Will added, he had lifted his head to look at the sky, and those words shocked Nico. How on earth did Will become dependent on him, wasn’t it the other way round?

“I did some reflection, you know, and apparently I had morphed myself to suit your needs, and when I went to university, I learned the hard way that I really wasn’t my own person. Not anymore. Sure, I had my hobbies, my interests, and talents, but as a person, I was always going like: act the way Nico wants me to be. Don’t disappoint Nico. Do this for Nico. Make Chiron Proud. Do not disappoint Apollo. And then I had friends, who were not demigods, they didn’t understand what we were going through, and it was a nice change of pace, but it was also hard, how do you explain to them you can’t go to karaoke night because you are busy healing people after the war games? How do you tell them that you know how to stitch people’s limbs back together because they tend to get them ripped off.”

Nico let out a small chuckle. “yeah I get that,” he stated, “one guy, we only dated for about two months, he demanded I be honest and tell him the truth, I had run into some empousai, and well one of them left a lipstick stain on my shirt, and I flat out told him I was being chased by crazy cheerleaders who are actually monsters. We broke up then and there.”

Nico wanted to slap himself. Why on earth would he mention his ex-boyfriend in front of his other ex that he randomly ran into? He wished the ground to swallow him whole. Where is Jason when he needs him?

“That sucks, I’m sorry.”

“What for? It wasn’t your fault,” Nico let a small smile grace his lips; however, he was cringing at himself inwardly, “We weren’t working out in the first place, he wanted a trophy, not a boyfriend.”

“It seems like you have gotten comfortable with yourself and is out there, I’m happy for you.”

The silence came back, and Nico felt like he wanted to slap himself. He always rambled and spoke about the most random things when it came to will. Is talking about your active sex life to your ex-boyfriend considered rubbing salt to the wound?

“I’m sorry,” Nico apologized after a few minutes of silence and gathering his thoughts slightly, “when we broke up, I was sort of petty, and I let it out, and shit talked about you to a lot of people.”

“you weren’t the only one,” Will shrugged, “I was also petty in my own right, I was angry, and I found out that you were shit-talking, so I did the same, sorry if my actions caused you discomfort and were the reason why you left.”

Nico stared at Will for a few seconds before bursting out laughing. He thought that this would be much more difficult, but here they are. Two adults in their late 20s apologizing for their behavior as two teenagers. It seemed that it was all they could do, say sorry, and make fools out of themselves in the process. 

Nico couldn’t believe himself. Several years ago, he hated the mere thought of Will Solace because he reminded Nico of the person he used to be. But now, Will stood in front of him, after eight years, and the two men are far away from who they used to be. Both on appearance and mentality.

“Do you think we're toxic to each other?” Nico asked as he stood up, dusted his pants, and extended a hand to Will, saying, “it’s getting late and might be monsters around, let's go check on your friends.”

“We were,” Will sighed and got up as well and began leading the way, “I mean ‘ _doctor’s orders_ ,’ seriously, who thought it was a good idea? Like I thought that me being a medic made me a great judge of people’s needs and just thought it would be best if I glued myself to you.”

“We were those couple that refused to be apart for more than a few minutes at a time.”

“True.”

They walked in silence for ten minutes before they reached their destination. Over there, Nico could spot several demigods. They were campers, perhaps 16 or 17, and some were most likely children of Demeter. “Well, we will be in the area for a few more days,” Will announced, “give me an iris call and we can catch up, there is a lot that I need to say and hear but we both need to gather our thoughts before we say anything and accuse each other.”

“Yeah,” Nico agreed, “I have a lot to say, we need the closure, but I am too tired, it’s been a long day.” Nico waved Will of and went into the shadow’s, popping up in his apartment that he got a few weeks ago and was in the middle of turning it into a safe house for demigods. He took off his dirty clothes and took a warm shower before falling asleep. The thought of talking to Will Solace was the last thing he recalled.

He had slept for two days straight, his body groaning in pain. The light of the sun filtering through the curtains was what had awoken him. He got out of bed and prepared for the day. A small breakfast of toasts and some fruits went along with his pain medication. That was something new that he had to take recently, finally, after learning he was a demigod and abusing his powers for almost two decades now, the subtle side effects were catching up to him. This time it was in the form of slight chronic pain as a result of constantly dissolving his body into small molecules to shadow travel; he was told that as he uses his powers more, the pain will get worse.

He spent the day relaxing and thinking of what to say to Will, he had a lot to say, but he needed to articulate his thoughts. Nico had decided to grab a piece of paper and a pen to write down his thoughts and what he wanted to say. He decided to contact Will once he was done and ask him to meet someplace. He sat there for several hours, pacing around as he wrote down how he felt into coherent sentences.

Once he had written what he wanted to say, he contacted Will, and they both agreed to meet at a bar on the boardwalk of Ocean City, seeing as Will and his friends were still in that area. Nico had shadow traveled there 15 minutes before their meeting time. He was feeling slightly nervous and wondered if it was a good idea to turn around and ignore the whole meeting. But he reminded himself, it was for closure, to let the past be the past.

Will showed up dressed in jeans and a white shirt with a green jacket. He smiled and greeted Nico before they both went in and ordered drinks. They sat in a secluded area of the bar where they can talk without someone hearing their conversation. “So, how do you want to do this?” Nico asked, taking a sip of his beer.

“Well, I have written a lot of stuff down, and it is like several pages,” Will answered sheepishly as he pulled out several folded sheets of paper from inside his jacket. “So I may take a long time, how about you start first?”

Nico sighed as he pulled out a piece of paper from his pockets. He had memorized what he wanted to say, but just in case he forgot something, he wrote the main points in a shortlist. He began explaining to Will how he felt throughout the relationship, the highs, and the lows. What he thought had gone wrong and how they could’ve done things better. Will had even nodded and agreed to some of the points Nico had made. Sometimes Nico would stop mid explaining and ask Will for his thoughts about that aspect of their relationship. 

Will went on how he felt suffocated at times in the relationship. How he had a hard time balancing between a good friend and a lover. How he had spent a lot of time being a demigod, he forgot how to be mortal for a while. How he wanted to be everyone’s friend and how it had backfired on him. How sometimes, he felt like the only say he has on matters is on health matters. How he hated what he preaches, how he felt like a hypocrite a lot of the times. How he had many expectations and how he was afraid that he would not meet them.

A few times they both cracked down, tears threatened to spill out of Will’s eyes, “for the longest time I felt so useless,” he explained, “I was like a boat on the ocean with no direction, here I am a demigod who doesn’t know how to fight, a song of Apollo that is bad at archery and music.”

“I get it,” Nico nodded, holding his drink in his hands, “For a while, I didn’t think I could do anything but be a demigod, just running errands for both camps and my father. I even lived in the underworld for a while. I mean, I still do sometimes. I have kept my contact with people to a minimum. The demigod community is very small, and news traveled fast, and everyone was in each other’s business.”

“Tell me about it,” Will chuckled, raising his drink in a mock toast, “after the breakup, I had a bunch of angry demigods making my life harder.”

“I was checking up with Frank once and he told me that you dropped out of school, what happened?”

“That break up was the final shove that tipped the iceberg,” Will explained solemnly, “apparently I was bottling everything up and lying to myself about a lot of things ever since I was about 12.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, I should actually thank you for that. Mr. D said that if things continued as they were for much longer, I might have fallen into severe depression and maybe went into a psychotic episode, I was already hallucinating some stuff.”

Nico looked at Will wide-eyed, it was the first time he heard this. He always thought that Will was happy and cheerful; he never expected him to have depression. He should’ve spoken to someone after the breakup, about the red flags that he noticed a bit late. “I was lucky, Mr.D cured me, he said it was a one-time thing and to watch myself for a while. I talked to a therapist at New Rome, he was a son of Bacchus, he suggested that I take a break and find myself.”

“So you dropped out of school because of this?”

“Yeah, I kinda spent doing some odd things around New Rome, mostly helping in the infirmary and hospital,” Will explained, “ but I still seemed to lose focus. My therapist suggested that I go out of New Rome and visit camp half-blood for a change of pace or do something else, somehow, I ended up following my mother as she went on tour for that whole year.”

“How was it?”

“Different,” Will supplied, “for a while, I felt as if I was running away from my problems, but then a year on the road with my mother and her friends and I have discovered many things about myself, I really really hate quinoa and celery.” Nico let out a laugh, remembering the times Will had went on about the benefits of green foods and celery in specific, oftentimes adding the vegetable into ‘healthy’ smoothies. 

“And then one day we were in Indianapolis for a concert, and I kinda bumped into Leo, and he told me about the waystation. He invited me for a few nights, then I moved there and went to pre-med and med school and actually graduated a while ago. I’m doing my residency at New Rome, but I kind of came up with the idea of traveling demigod doctors, like doctors with no borders.”

“How is Leo, by the way?” Nico inquired curiously. He had run into Leo many times, and Nico can say that the two are somewhat friends. He even offered to run errands for the son of Hephaestus. “Last I talked to him was a year ago, he never mentioned you.”

“Really? I was like living there for almost 7 years and he failed to mention me?”

“Yeah, I mean I bought him some supplies he needed to create those demigod proof electronic devices,” Nico remarked, “he even gave me a laptop for free, but made me pay for a phone.”

“Laptop and Phone? for what?”

“How am I supposed to contact my mortal acquaintances or do my job?” Nico replied in a matter of fact tone as if the reason was quite obvious.

“How would a laptop and phone help you in the mythical world? unless you want to attract monsters?” Will jabbed, and Nico had to admit, he kind of missed all of that teasing. 

He grinned like a maniac, which to Will meant that the other man was about to drop an information bomb. “Little secret, I have a mortal job,” he whispered, looking around as if someone will hear him and leaned close to Will, “I am a freelance journalist.”

“What?”

“Well I have two jobs, the first is a freelance journalist where I write random articles for different newspapers and magazines,” Nico added, “the second is I sort of run a travel blog, I post sceneries, landscapes and highlights of each place I visit, I have an Instagram and I was thinking of opening a travel office.”

“You!” Will exclaimed in surprise, a smile of disbelief on his face, “the Nico di Angelo is actually a journalist and a blogger, and you have an Instagram?”

“Talk about unexpected,” Nico laughed, motioning to the barmaid for another set of drinks, “I kind of went all around the world for a while, you know the typical running away from everything style, and I met this stranger and we just chatted, and I told them that I kind of do a lot of traveling and they suggested that I could make money out of documenting my travels and selling photos of places to travel magazines.”

“How did that make you into a journalist?”

“Well, if you hadn’t noticed, I am kind of fond of reading books,” Nico explained, “I actually have a GED if you also didn’t know, so I went to college online and graduated in three years with a degree in English literature. I mean having dead writers and poets teaching you does have it’s perks. Besides, I was hiding in the underworld for a while.”

“Who would’ve thought that you running away from problems would bring out such an unexpected result.” Will snickered.

“Oh, please, you also ran away,” Nico retorted, “a few minutes ago, you said you went on the road with your mother for a year.”

“yeah…” Will hummed dishearteningly, a cloud of gloom settled between them. Nico felt like he just shot them both in the foot. He hadn’t meant to come off as an apathetic person. He opened and closed his mouth like a fish trying to find the right words to say, but Will had saved him the trouble when the blonde smiled softly with a wistful look in his eyes, “We both had a habit of running away, albeit, in different methods, you would literally run away while I pretend that whatever is wrong didn’t exist,” he scoffed, “look at where that got us.”

“I still do run away,” Nico commented, “well not as much as I used to and not for the same reasons.”

Will cocked his head to the side, his hand resting on his drink. “I kind of select a random city, and I live there for a while, the only time that I leave that city is if there is a monster issue or I broke up with someone.”

“So…” Will drawled out, “what is the ratio between those two reasons?”

“Mostly because of monster attacks, and I kind of run a travel blog which is actually my main source of income, so all I need is actually some sort of home base” Nico had supplied, an amused glint in his eyes, “I mean I did date around for a while, I had to move on from you, I had some long term relationships but they were all mortals and frequent monster attacks kind of ruin everything and the person I’m dating thinks I’m crazy or a maniac. What about you?”

“Well if you consider the fact that the waystation houses a good amount of demigod refugees and other people, then the number of monsters in Indianapolis is quite normal, but when you have a date with someone and a bunch of monsters pop up and proceed to attack you and trash whatever place we have been visiting that kind of ruins a lot of things.”

“I know this is none of my business, you don’t have to answer at all,” Nico began slightly uneasy, but for the sake of his mind, he needed to know. “Were they mostly guys or girls, your dating experiences, I mean your exes. like I know that you are bisexual and this is really invasive but I kind of want to know if I was what people call ‘sexual experimenting’, like did I stop you from like other guys, was I ya know a turn off for other guys, oh please let me shut up,” He groaned and covered his face with his hands in embarrassment.

Will furrowed his brows, his lips set in a grim line, “when I started dating again, at first I couldn’t date guys because I always saw you in them and that was kind of difficult, I dated a few girls but after a few breakups I found the confidence to date other guys at well, I once even had this crush on this guy in my anatomy class and we dated for a month, the thing is he had blonde hair and blue eyes, which kind of in retrospection looks weird, we could’ve passed as siblings.”

Nico let out a bark of laughter before his eyes widened in shock, and he tried to cover his mouth. Will stared at him emotionlessly before bursting into laughter as well. The two men laughing rather loudly, earning a few glances from other customers at the bar. They talked for a while before moving towards the pool table and playing for some time while they recalled some stories of the past.

“So I came down to Maryland with my attending, we were visiting a hospital in Salisbury and providing our services as visiting doctors, it’s like an hour away from here,” Will stated, “We ran into some demigods who have come here on some sort of quests and they asked us to help them heal a group of nymphs, my attending thought it would be a good idea to go by myself.”

“Those nymphs were clearly in good hands, and your attending knows how talented you are,” Nico quipped, a smirk on his face as he scored another point.

“What about you? what bought you to the isle of wight on that day?” The question had come out of nowhere, making Nico miss his shot and for it to become Will’s turn.

“Long story short, I had broken up with my boyfriend Aiden about a month ago, it was mutual, no big deal,” Nico sighed as he assessed Will positioning his cue stick with an accuracy that wasn’t present in their earlier plays. It seemed that the sun of Apollo is planning on bringing the big guns out, and well, Nico isn’t sure if his archery skills have improved since they last saw each other.

“Anyways, I sort of moved to Philadelphia and I’ve been living there for a few weeks, so far so great,” Nico added, “And then I got this job about writing up about ocean pollution and how it is affecting Ocean City and the entire area in general, and when I was searching about it, I found out that the area is a good place to include in my blog and whenever I was taking pictures, be it at the beach or at the golf courses I kept getting attacked by random monsters, so I sort of been having a long day and I wanted to catch my breath.”

Will hummed as he scored several more points, giving him the lead. The two continued chatting and exchanged phone numbers as they both now had phones. Nico had also reluctantly given Will his pen names for both his journalist work and his travel blogging work. “I kind of missed this,” Will admitted as they both left the bar and were walking on the boardwalk, the night breeze chilling the air around them. Nico had been thankful that they were both wearing jackets. 

“What do you mean by this?”

“Us,” Will shrugged, his hands shoved in his pockets, “just kind of talking about anything and everything.”

“We rushed that relationship,” Nico replied with a nostalgic voice, “we should’ve spent more time as friends first and had gotten our shit sorted out.”

“hmm…”

“Not everyone is Annabeth,” Nico added sincerely, “or a child of Athena, we are allowed to be confused and figure ourselves out. I was 23 when I stopped being worried about what people might think when I tell them I’m gay. We are allowed to make mistakes, we are all running in this marathon towards the same goal, but we all reach it differently. I took a lot of detours to reach where I am, and I am still taking many more.”

“That was very philosophical.” 

“Traveling the world and doing a lot of soul searching kind of does that to you.” They continued walking for a while longer until they ordered an Uber to drop off Will at his hotel room in Salisbury. Nico, the ever kind gentleman had walked Will up to his room. His heart started to beat louder with each step. He felt intoxicated with this feeling, it was different from whatever they had in the past. Nico felt calm and at peace with himself. He couldn’t help but notice the warmth that Will was radiating, and he felt like slipping his hand into Will’s.

“So....” Will shuffled his feet as he dug out his room keys and opened the door, “I guess this is goodnight.”

Nico nodded, and before he knew it, he felt warm lips pressed on his cheeks. His brain short-circuited for a second, and he didn’t know what to do. Those warm lips left as fast they came, leaving him yearning for more. Will gave him one of his charming smiles, “Friends?”

“Friends.”

Nico watched as Will went into his room and closed the door. He managed to gather his courage and walked out of the hotel before turning into an alley and jumping into the shadows and straight into his apartment. The moment he flickered in, he fell to his knees, a hand on his cheek, a wide smile plastered on his face. His heart was racing, and he felt like a school girl having her first crush.

“Friends,” he whispered before falling onto his back in the middle of the living room. His phone pinged with a notification, and he saw it was from Will.

_– Hope you arrived safely, and don’t forget to rest and take some ambrosia and nectar. Good night._

Nico sighed as he wrote a reply back. Never in his wildest dreams did he think this could ever happen. He had to let go of Will for both of their sakes, their relationship was a train-wreck going at full speed. There were good parts and bad parts. Parts that have been ingrained into their very souls. 

When he was 18, he watched as their love died in the cold winds of November at a park in San Francisco. Now at 27, a little over eight years since that love had left his life, it came back. Will Solace was back into his life as if a high tide had swept him in just at the right time. Barreling into him so fast that it feels that his breath has been knocked out of his chest. Friends. That was what Will had asked. Maybe that is what he needs at the moment, a friend to lean on.

And if Nico decided to pop up in Camp Jupiter several months later out of the blue, seeking the senate's audience for a proposal, his steps seemed lighter and his head held high, dressed in his _formal jacket_ , then they were none the wiser.


	2. Chapter 2

He walked a few steps behind a group of seven demigods, his hands in the pockets of his yellow hoodie. Will had to remind himself that he was only here upon their request for aid; he was in town with his attending doctor for a job when he was approached by the group for help. 

He could feel the gazes of strangers on him, watching as a 28-year-old man was walking behind a group of teenagers between the ages of 13 and 16 in isle of wight bay nature park. He hoped that camp half-blood's bright orange camp shirts made him look less of a creep and more of a counselor.

They had reached their destination and found several nymphs in different states of injury. There was an attack on the wildlife by a group of humans, and the nymphs had fought them off. Word traveled, and the group who were in another park came to the aid of the nymphs and bought Will Solace with them.

Will frowned as he leaned down and inspected his first patient, a dryad who seemed to have broken her arm and has many scrapes. He asked each nymph after inspecting them if they wanted to be healed using conventional methods or his healing powers. “Humans can be cruel sometimes,” he muttered as he placed his hand over the wound and began chanting a hymn in ancient greek.

As he was healing all of the nymphs, he wondered how his situation came to be. Once he started his residency, he had suggested to the board in New Rome to start a traveling doctor’s program, outsourcing their doctors for money, and his superiors thought it was a good idea. 

They were in Salisbury, providing their services to a few hospitals when they met the campers. Well, it was Will’s boss who spotted them and made his way towards the teenagers, taking out his credentials and papers as proof of their allegiances. One of the campers happened to realize who Will was and quickly trusted the teacher/student duo.

A few days later, one of the older campers approached them and asked for their help. He went on to describe that there was an attack at a park an hour away and that many nature spirits were injured as collateral damage. His attending nodded and told the camper that Will is going to help them. And that was how he found himself spending his entire afternoon in a natural park healing mythical creatures and the occasional animals that came to him.

Just as the sunset rolled around, Will finished his job and was sitting with the group eating treats and snacks provided by the nymphs as a token of their gratitude. Will smiled as he ate some fruits, talked to the campers, and learned what they were doing. The kids turned out to be on green missions, cleaning up parks and checking up on the nature spirits that dwelled there and helping them out, it helped that some were Demeter’s children.

He was chatting with them when one nymph had jumped at them, “There was an injured demigod over there,” she pointed with her finger to the direction she came from, “Keera spotted him running from up north, but there were no monsters behind him.”

Will looked at the teens and asked them to stay put, while he checked up on that demigod. He followed the nymph as she asked the others about the strange and injured demigod. They pointed to a direction and flirted with Will, he ignored them and went towards the suspected demigod. He continued walking until he spotted a figure in black and covered in dirt, hunched over on a bench.

He froze as he stood before the figure, noticing that familiar stygian iron sword, the black hair, and those features that were ingrained in his brain, though they looked older, more mature now. He could see that the once sickly pale skin was now healthier and had an olive tone to it. Nico looked up and gasped when he saw Will, obviously not expecting him as well.

Will stood there for a few seconds, but it felt like hours. He took in Nico, how sharper and more defined his features looked, the brown of his eyes that seemed to twinkle with both disbelief and mischief. His hair a tuft of waves that reached towards the nape of his neck, slightly longer than what he recalls it used to be, styled in a half-up ponytail. Even though he looked like a biker dude that just got into a scuffle, there was something warm and mature about him.

“Hey Sunshine,” He greeted, his mouth moving on its own. Will wanted to slap himself,  _ seriously, sunshine _ . It was like his body had short-circuited at the prospect of approaching Nico. He wondered how the other man would react given their history. 

“What are you doing here?” Nico replied, and Will noted the exhaustion in his tone as if the other man really didn’t want to deal with Will at the moment, or like ever. 

_ Quickly say something _ , he told himself. He felt his nerves making themselves at home, “Can I start with saying sorry?” he asked, fidgeting, a new sign that he developed when he got nervous. He saw Nico raising his eyebrows, “I’m sorry for being an ass to you back then,” he began, and he mentally screamed at himself.

_ No brain, not like that. Stop. Stop. STOP. _

“We were both going through some shit, and we were selfish. I was selfish, and I had taken it out on you, and I know no amount of apologies will make up for what I did,” he began rambling, and he begged his mouth to stop, “but let me apologize, and I don’t know what else to say because to be honest I never thought I was going to see you again, I really didn’t expect to see you here, I came because of some request along with some other demigods and some local nymphs said–”

At that, he froze for a second, and his mind decided to remember why he was here in the first place. He looked at Nico, concentrating and assessing him for injuries. There were a few scrapes and bruises, nothing a little ambrosia won’t heal, no need to fuss.

“Oh gods, you are hurt,” he exclaimed and felt his own hands slap his head. He actually thought about it, but it seemed his hands wanted to really hit him, “and here I was rambling,” he muttered as he searched his bag for some ambrosia and handed a small square to Nico.

“I’m so stupid, I meet you for the first time in ages and forget that the nymphs said there was an injured demigod nearby,” he apologized.  _ Nice save _ , his brain supplied. He watched as Nico hesitantly took the ambrosia but slightly relax when his wounds slowly started to heal, some of the minor ones fading. 

“So…” Nico began, his voice awkward as if he didn’t know what to say. Will wanted to say something as well, but he didn’t know how to start a conversation with his ex-boyfriend who he had ended things with very badly to the point that they haven’t spoken to each other in eight years. 

“umm…yeah, this is a bit awkward,” He sighed and decided to take a seat on the other side of the bench. Preferably somewhere he won’t have to look Nico in the face or eyes before he starts panicking again. They sat there for what felt like forever, Will could’ve sworn he could hear ants talking in this silence. His mind was traveling at light speed, a million thoughts popping in his head. Taking a deep breath, he decided it was now or never. The do or die moment.

“You know,” he began and felt himself cower. He wanted to bolt away instead of saying anything that could make things worse, “For a while, I thought you would come back, but you cleared out the apartment, and I knew it wasn’t like the other times, where we would avoid each other for days before making up. You were gone for good.”

Nico remained silent, and Will thought that this might be a good sign and carried on. “I realized how dependent I was on you,” he said as he looked up to the sky, seeking the stars for support.

Still, Nico said nothing, and Will continued, “I did some reflection, you know, and apparently, I had morphed myself to suit your needs, and when I went to university, I learned the hard way that I really wasn’t my own person. Not anymore. Sure, I had my hobbies, my interests, and talents, but as a person, I was always going like: act the way Nico wants me to be. Don’t disappoint Nico. Do this for Nico. Make Chiron Proud. Do not disappoint Apollo. And then I had friends, who were not demigods, they didn’t understand what we were going through, and it was a nice change of pace, but it was also hard, how do you explain to them you can’t go to karaoke night because you are busy healing people after the war games? How do you tell them that you know how to stitch people’s limbs back together because they tend to get them ripped off.”

There he said something. Part of the problem. Part of why he was so wrong on so many levels. He didn’t want to go and admit the deep stuff, not yet, not before he knows that they are cool. That Nico is willing to listen.

He heard a small chuckle, “yeah I get that,” Nico remarked, “one guy, we only dated for about two months, he demanded I be honest and tell him the truth, I had run into some empousai, and well one of them left a lipstick stain on my shirt, and I flat out told him I was being chased by crazy cheerleaders who are actually monsters. We broke up then and there.”

Will didn’t know how to feel about the answer. On the one hand, he is somewhat glad that Nico feels somewhat similar about the whole hanging out with mortal, but on the other hand, he wasn’t prepared to hear his ex talking about his dating life. The first time they see each other in eight years since  _ that  _ incident and Nico brings up his dating history. What does one say to that?

“That sucks, I’m sorry,” his mouth answered for him. And Will really needed to do something about his mouth which seemed to talk without his permission.

“What for? It wasn’t your fault,” Nico smiled back, and Will took it as a good thing, “we weren’t working out in the first place, he wanted a trophy, not a boyfriend.”

Will dared to steal a glance, and he took notice of the pride bracelet that Nico was wearing, “It seems like you have gotten comfortable with yourself and is out there, I’m happy for you.”

Yup. That was the wrong thing to say, judging by the fact that the awkward silence had returned, and Will felt like he wanted to dig a hole and die in it.

“I’m sorry,” Nico suddenly apologized, his voice holding a grim tone, “when we broke up, I was sort of petty, and I let it out and shit talked about you to a lot of people.”

Ah. Will remembered the little petty war they had a few months after they broke up. It escalated so far that Will thought that he managed to push Nico so far away that he decided to run away for good. “You weren’t the only one, I was also petty in my own right, I was angry, and I found out that you were shit-talking, so I did the same, sorry if my actions caused you discomfort and were the reason why you left.”

He could feel Nico’s eyes boring at him before the dark-haired man burst into a laugh. It seemed like things are going better than he had anticipated, well that would happen when they were stumbling through their apologies and the most awkward silence ever. Will felt the corners of his mouth tug into a small silence, this was good, not a train-wreck.

“Do you think we're toxic to each other?” Nico had asked suddenly, standing up and extending an arm, “it’s getting late and might be monsters around, let's go check on your friends.”

_ Crap. _ Will thought as he remembered the other demigods, he told them to stay put, and if he didn’t show up in an hour, they should send a search party. He looked at his watch and noticed that he hadn’t been gone for long, forty minutes at most. 

He knew the answer to Nico’s question without the need to think, “we were, I mean ‘ _ doctor’s orders _ ,’ seriously, who thought it was a good idea? Like I thought that me being a medic made me a great judge of people’s needs and just thought it would be best if I glued myself to you.”

Nico followed him as he leads the way towards the campers, this seemed too unrealistic. Too good to be true.

“We were those couple that refused to be apart for more than a few minutes at a time.”

“True,” he hummed. He had that conversation with his therapist many times. Will was trying to do everything so perfectly that his younger self thought being together at all the time was right.  _ It didn’t help that you were clingy as well _ , he wanted to say out loud but thought against it. 

They had barely made it in time when he spotted the campers and waved at them. They looked like they were debating sending a search party. He turned and looked at Nico and met his eyes, he had gotten taller, another growth spurt making him stand at 6’ 3” (190 cm), an inch shorter than Will. He had to admit, Nico went from cute to sexy. It was a perfectly normal and unbiased observation.

“Well, we will be in the area for a few more days, give me an iris call and we can catch up, there is a lot that I need to say and hear but we both need to gather our thoughts before we say anything and accuse each other.” He didn’t know where the courage had come from but was glad, he really needed to sit down with Nico and have a proper talk.

He was pleased when Nico had agreed, “yeah, I have a lot to say, we need the closure, but I am too tired, it’s been a long day.” They said their goodbyes and Will watched as Nico went into the shadows, and he had to admit he was curious to his destination.  _ Probably the underworld _ , his mind supplied.

“Who was that?” one of the campers asked, “a roman? someone famous?”

“He’s greek,” Will answered, his hands shoved back into his pockets. He gave the campers a soft, reassuring smile, “an old friend of mine, we parted on bad terms, he was that injured demigod. Bruises and scrapes, he’s all healed up now. You can ask Mr. D about him. Just describe the guy and he will know who you’re talking about.”

“He’s hot,” another commented, he was one of the 16-year-old campers, “he was wearing a pride bracelet, think I would have a chance?”

“He is 10 years older than you, and you are still a minor,” Will scolded but laughed as he saw the campers' curious looks. “If I ever see him again, I will ask him to visit camp half-blood, and you can talk to him if you want.”

They went their separate ways, and Will had checked in with his attending only to see that tomorrow would be a slightly busy day. He would be participating in a few standard procedure surgeries. If he had some time, he might observe his boss performing an arrhythmia surgery. 

He looked at the time and saw that he still has two hours to spare before he usually sleeps. He requested his dinner from room service, grabbed his journal from his suitcase, and skimmed through it. He decided to write down what he wanted to say, his therapist always told him to write down how he feels, it always helped. 

His food has arrived, and he an idea of what he wanted to say. He started a rough draft with points to highlight. Words swiftly appeared on paper, some sounded like pure poetry, but Will didn’t care as long as his point went across.

He wrote down how the first two years of their relationship was a bliss. How he was happy that Nico had decided that he wants to fall in love with Will, and how much that meant to him. He skimmed through their third year together and focused mostly on their final year together. They were both 18, and things had changed so much in those four years together, some of the changes were almost irreversible.

That last few months of that year were blank, a pitch-black room. He was told that memory loss was one of the side effects, and he sought help from the Hypnos cabin to regain those memories. Some were easy to recover, others were hard to get to, they were blocked by Will’s own mind.

PTSD. Depression. Psychosis.

Will laughed when he was given the diagnosis, literally. He looked at Mr. D, Chiron, and Kayla, who was the head of the Apollo cabin at the time and just laughed. Things turned a bit nasty afterward, and Will winced as he recalled how Kayla had smacked him in the head and knocked him unconscious.

Mr.D had healed him of his psychosis, something about Will being worth it. The god also treated the maddening aspects of his PTSD. “You were in the in-between stages of prodrome and acute psychosis. If you had proceeded into acute, things might’ve been worse,” Mr.D had told him.

Everything else he said was out of his capabilities, and perhaps he should seek Apollo’s help. His memory, a fine example. Will thought that it wasn’t the Mr.D couldn’t heal them but rather did not want to.

But some things he could remember clearly.

He remembered when they moved to New Rome and bought an apartment together. At the time, they had a rough patch in their relationship because of miscommunication. Back then, Will was quite sure that he wasn’t at fault, but looking back, he could see that he was at fault two-thirds of the time.

He remembers going out every day to UC Berkeley, going to pre-med school, then coming back to New Rome and helping out in the infirmary or the hospital, whoever needed a hand that day. He made some mortal friends, and Nico seemed to be okay about it, he even introduced them to Nico after much pressing. Once they learned that Nico was taking a ‘gap year’ to figure out what he wants to do with his life, their opinions have changed. 

Will always toed around the truth, trying his best not to mention being a demigod and the whole business it brings. He couldn’t do much when it seemed that his friends disliked Nico and looked down at him as if he were an inferior being. Nico seemed to ignore them most of the time, but sometimes he would slip whenever Will mentioned them, he would get this look of slight disapproval in his face.

It pissed Will off. So what, Nico’s friends were allowed to look down on him for being pretty much useless in combat, but Will’s friends were not allowed to say a peep. Talk about hypocrisy.

Through the stress of university, quizzes, exams, and balancing two different lives, Will and Nico still managed to make some time for each other. They went on dates in New Rome, and sometimes Nico took them to the city, the only downside of city dates were the monster attacks.

Will could remember Nico feeling guilty, the monsters always came for him. Never for Will. Only attacking Nico. And Will wanted to make Nico happy, so he gave a fake reassuring smile and lied through his teeth, telling Nico that it was fine.

The distance between them seemed to grow wider and wider, and at the time, Will wondered if Nico no longer loves him. If he only needs Will to reassure himself that someone is interested in him romantically. Maybe the Romans were making Nico notice that Will is only going to be dragging him down. 

He decided that he didn’t want to be around people who hated him, so he started spending more time with his mortal friends, at least they liked him. Sometimes they studied together, and sometimes they just hung out. He knew that Nico had a tendency to get jealous, so he made the most stupid excuses, and he should’ve known that these excuses made it sound like he was cheating.

_ ‘I will be out with my school friends studying for a biology quiz.’ _

_ ‘Didn’t you say that you had a biology quiz just yesterday.’ _

_ ‘It’s for another quiz that is the day after tomorrow.’ _

_ ‘Oh, okay.’ _

Maybe that was why Nico was staying away. He thought Will was cheating, so he was decided to cheat himself. Will had to put a stop on this, Nico’s disappearances were getting longer, perhaps he is having an affair with someone at camp half-blood. He remembers Nico listening to him when he says ‘doctor’s orders,’ maybe it would work this time.

That period of time was the haziest, he could swear up and down that he did something or had a conversation with someone, but they would all look at him and say he was mistaken and that it was just the stress of juggling university and working as a part-time healer in New Rome.

Then Nico started to spend more time at home, he doesn’t know why. Sometimes they would argue, he doesn’t remember about what but he recalls the feeling of frustration and annoyance. And when Nico started hovering over him like an overbearing mother, Will felt like he was suffocating. It didn’t help that his mortal friends seemed to be slowly distancing themselves from him, some of them clearly avoiding him.

The time between the first week of November and late December was the most blank. He had worked very hard to have access to those memories. And he cried and screamed and fell into a depressive state. 

_ That _ memory was perhaps the most painful thing he ever felt. It had felt weird looking at from an outsider’s point of view. The signs were visible, he looked as if he had lost some weight, which he was sure he did. He was wearing sandals in November, his mismatched socks protecting his toes from the cold. He saw Nico trying to convince him that wearing shoes was a better option, but it seemed that he did not budge.

They went on a picnic, Nico was trying to do something nice for Will. They had walked around golden gate park for a while before they went to strawberry hill and sat behind the bushes near a body of water. Nico had bought a portable heater to keep them warm as they sat in the grass. Will wanted to smack himself as he watched his memory self complaining about how the whole outing was a waste.

Nico had made them hot chocolate, and he got strawberries dipped in chocolate and pastries from their favorite bakery. Those usually were sold out by 10 am, so Nico must’ve woken up very early to get them. 

After the first few sessions trying to regain those memories, he had decided to ask Kayla to be there with him. It was hard looking at himself, he needed support, someone that understands him, and Kayla fit the bill.

He could see Nico trying to strike a conversation with him, he was trying to get Will to open up to him. Kayla had squeezed his hands as he watched himself brush Nico’s worries off. Will was honestly upset with himself, his boyfriend was doing his best to try and help, even though Nico looked like he himself wanted to have a mental breakdown. He could hear the plea and desperation in Nico’s voice. 

And when it seemed like Will is about to snap, Nico would change the topic. He would talk about his various jobs, but most of the time, he spoke about books. Will was surprised to learn that during those few months in New Rome, Nico had built a vast collection of books and seems to finish one every few days. He could hear Nico talking with great fervor and excitement, his hands moving in wide gestures was huge telltale.

His heart broke as he watched himself, not caring what Nico was saying. He threw subtle signs of anger, radiating excess heat, making Nico more subdued with mere glances. 

“You’re being an asshole,” Kayla commented as she glared at memory-Will. And to be honest, he was so mesmerized with Nico talking about books that he forgot about her being with him.

Things seemed to be somewhat well, as well as it can be with Will in the state that he was. Then the monster’s attacked, and Will gaped at his memory-self who just sat there indifferently and left Nico to do the fighting. “What the fuck! Will,” Kayla hissed in outrage, “get your ass moving now.”

Will remained frozen in shock, then he saw memory-him getting up and looking at Nico, at least he was still in his right mind and was going to check Nico for injuries. Then memory-him opened his mouth.  _ Nope _ , he spoke too fast. This was worse than what he thought.

Will felt disgusted with himself as he watched his memory shouting at Nico, and Nico crying back at him. He felt the bile rise in his throat as he hurled one insult after the other at Nico, some of which were pretty revolting and vile. Kayla had pulled her hand out of his as if she were burnt and looked at him with an indescribable face; disgust, hate, anger, all morphed together. 

His heart stopped as he heard the final words that made Nico snap.

Tears were streaming down Will’s face by this point, hearing this, seeing this, it was all too much. “If that’s how you feel then you should’ve said something, I don’t need your PITY, you could’ve broken up with me ages ago and it would’ve been fine,” Nico had croaked, tears streaming down his face, “Don’t worry I will spare you the trouble.”

And then Nico was gone, and Will was alone. 

They were pulled out of by the dream by one of Hypnos’ children, and Will threw up in the middle of the cabin, crying and screaming. He felt Kayla yank him back by the sleeve of his shirt and her fist connected to his face. At first, he didn’t comprehend it, he didn’t feel the pain, he didn’t feel the punches she threw at him. Everything was a blur, he could see people racing into the cabin, pulling Kayla off him.

“YOU ARE NOT THE WILL I KNEW,” She screamed, tears streaming down her face, her knuckles covered in blood, Austin pulling her away, “I DON’T EVEN WANT TO SEE YOUR DISGUSTING FACE AGAIN.”

He soon had passed out and was carried off to the infirmary. He woke up the next day, and his face felt like it was hit by a boulder. He recalled the events of the previous day and felt the blood rush out of him. He curled into himself and cried, he felt numb and too tired. Some of his siblings had tended to him, but most people seemed to stay out of his way. He laid in that infirmary bed for an entire week, barely ate, or did anything. 

The infirmary staff had concluded that Will is experiencing a depressive episode and perhaps maybe shock. They tried to get Will to talk, but he said nothing. The person looking after him, one of his younger sisters, said, “Kayla won’t say a word, neither anyone from the Hypnos cabin, she gets angry at the mere mention of your name, what happened Will?.”

Will shrugged and covered himself with the blanket, he wished that he could disappear. The next thing he knew that he was being woken up from his sleep by a heavy shove. He opened his eyes to see Kayla standing over him, glaring, “I’m still mad at you, but we need to know the whole story before we come to conclusions, you showed up here on December 19, and that shit show was in mid-November, there is a whole month missing Will, what happened there?”

He begrudgingly and sort of forcibly got out of bed and sought more answers. The children of Hypnos didn’t want Will back in their cabin after he covered their floor in puke and blood. But the guy who was in-charge, Matt, of Will’s progress was curious as well, and they decided to go through a week worth of memories in this sitting.

Jumping back, Will was slightly nervous. He didn’t want to know what he had done in those few weeks. Memory-Will was back in the apartment and was studying for his finals, he was looking at something in the corner of his room. They saw nothing, but Matt explained that Will was hallucinating and used his powers to bring the visions to life.

There, by the sofa, a mirage appeared in the form of Nico di Angelo. He looked different, dressed in Will’s hoodie and reading. The fake Nico smiled at memory-Will and went around the apartment doing chores.

It seemed that Will kept hallucinating that Nico was still around and that they were happy together. His memory failed to notice the day that Nico’s possessions were gone or the note left on the kitchen, saying that Will has complete ownership of the apartment.

The hallucinations kept getting worse. People started to whisper, and he could see Hazel glaring at him, it made him angry. After finals, Will tried IM’ing Nico, but the calls kept being rejected, and Will grew more frustrated. That’s when he noticed that Nico’s items were missing from the apartment. Will had searched the entire apartment, shouting curses and pacing around frantically.

“That fucker he is having an affair,” memory-Will ran a hand through his hair. There were bags under his eyes from the lack of sleep, and he had lost several pounds, and Will had to admit that he looked somewhat sickly. “Is it Mitchel, Ellis, Paolo, Damien, who is it?”

Five days later, Will had arrived in camp half-blood and marched in the big house demanding to see Nico. Chiron looked at him in confusion and said that he hadn’t seen Nico since his last job in November. That’s when Percy had shown up and decked Will in the face. Chiron had controlled things before they escalated, but he still remembers the hatred in Percy’s eyes. It seemed that the son of Poseidon wanted to do nothing more than just killing him. 

“You broke Nico’s heart,” was all that Percy had said before he left the room, his words were not a statement but rather a hidden threat. Chiron had asked Kayla, the current cabin counselor, to talk things through with Will. He and his sister got into an argument about Nico’s whereabouts and how Will doesn’t remember ending things with Nico and was surprised to find his boyfriend taking all of his belongings out of nowhere. 

Mr.D was sipping some diet coke in the background, observing the whole ordeal when he spoke out of nowhere. “Wiggle Salon over here isn’t mentally stable,” he pointed out at Will, “let’s see, aside from the usual case of PTSD, Window suffers from depression, and oh boy, this is something I haven’t seen in a while, psychosis.”

“What do you mean, Mr.D?” Kayla asked, looking between the god and her brother. Chiron also studied Will, trying to assess his condition.

“Your brother, like most campers he has some form of PTSD and depression and is probably between early and mid-phase psychosis.”

Will stared at them for a few heartbeats before he burst into laughter, “I knew it,” he yelled frantically, a glint of madness in his eyes, “you are all plotting something, Nico has put you to this, WHERE IS HE? IS HE BEHIND THAT WALL?”

Things had escalated when Will lunged forward, and he had to be restrained. He was tied to the bed for a few days before Mr. D had decided to heal him from his insanity. 

In the next few weeks, Will had spent with his siblings and the Hypnos cabin trying to regain his missing memories. After every session, Will seemed to have lost the will to live, he was more heartbroken and overall just tired. He got his memories back just in time to return to university, with a week to spare. He promised Chiron that he would seek a therapist at New Rome, and to make sure that Will didn’t do something stupid, he had Austin and some Ares camper accompany him to California. 

The day they arrived, Will had scheduled an appointment with a son of Bacchus – Isaac – and Austin had dropped him off at the clinic. Will was reluctant at first and told the Isaac that it was Dionysus that had given Will the diagnosis. His therapist quickly provided Will with his own diagnosis and decided to prescribe some medication. And just before Will had left the clinic, Isaac had recommended taking some time off from school would be good, just enough to get him back on his feet again.

Will had agreed, seeing as he was not motivated to do anything and didn’t feel like going to university. He had opted to be a full-time healer in New Rome, earning his pay while working on his mental health with Isaac. At first, Will thought that it could be manageable, but sometimes he would hear whispers and see people side-eyeing him. He had several young legionnaires ask him about Nico, but he didn’t know what to say.

“I honestly had hope that maybe Nico will show up out of nowhere, and we would talk about it,” he once told his therapist, “but the apartment is still empty, all of his stuff is gone, and the lease is under my name.”

“You told me that you experienced some memory loss in the past few months and had sought help in camp half-blood in regaining them,” his therapist began, “Was there anything in there that might have indicated that he might come back?”

“Whenever we would argue or have a big fight, Nico would storm off, we won’t talk for days,” Will answered, he kept clasping and unclasping his hands, “BUT he always came back, he would calm down and come back to me, even the opposite is the same, when I would get mad and ignore him, I would go back to him when I cooled down.”

“I see.”

“I looked at these memories, Isacc,” Will stressed, “Nico knew something was wrong with me, he will come back once he learns that I am seeking help.”

“Will, this is not a good outlook,” Isacc had explained, he leaned a bit closer to Will and looked the younger demigod in the eye, “this belief that you have that Nico will come back to you no matter how much you hurt him, it is not good.”

They had talked for a while longer, Isaac kept trying to ask Will of what he had said, but Will pretended not to hear the question. As much as Will thought that Isaac is helping, he wasn’t going to spill out what he had apparently yelled at Nico. 

Things proceeded to go smoothly for the most time. Some days he just wasn’t in it. He had screwed up in the infirmary a few times, sometimes he just lost focus. Things got harder when he started to hear more rumors. He heard some campers saying that they saw Nico and talked to him, and it pissed Will off. It seemed that Nico is avoiding him. One day he had asked Terminus – politely and with offerings and prayers – to tell Nico that Will wanted to see him. In the next few weeks, he started hearing even more rumors circling around him.

‘ _ They say Will Solace may be good looking, but he is as fake as they come. _ ’

_ ‘Did you know that Will Solace actually has a small dick, talk about embarrassing, I feel bad for his partners.’ _

‘ _ He is an all-around asshole. _ ’

Every other day, he would hear a new rumor pop up. He noticed a shift in people, how some of them started to tiptoe around him. He talked to Isaac about it. The therapist tried to cheer him up and told him to ignore those baseless rumors. But Will knew that these rumors were not baseless. They were a smear campaign. And he knew who was spreading out these lies.

_ Two can play this game _ , he thought once he had connected the dots. So he sometimes slipped a rumor or an insult of his own in between conversations. That turned into an aggressive and petty war between him and Nico. With each rumor heard, they would set out another. Winter was gone, and spring was just around the corner, and they were still at it.

“I know it’s him,” he ranted as he paced in Isaac’s office, “he is painting me as a terrible person, for what one mistake, one time I go off the rails, and I am suddenly the most evil creature ever.”

“you are not evil Will, why would you ever believe that?”

“you don’t see how people act when I’m in the same room Isaac,” Will said hoarsely, his voice breaking as he felt like crying, “they act like I am the plague, sometimes they avoid me, I see them itching to punch me. I had a guy once approach me and tell me that if I caused any trouble, then I am not welcomed. When did I ever cause anyone trouble?”

Isaac had comforted Will and had they worked out the rumor problem. Will would start by avoiding saying some shit about Nico, it would be a start, but once he would do that, then the rumors will slowly die down by themselves. And for a while, Will had believed that. Things were slowly starting to look up until the day Percy Jackson came to the infirmary after an incident involving some weapons.

Will was working the late afternoon shift, he saw Percy and approached him with good intentions. A few short quipped answers, and Will had healed Percy’s wounds and walked the hero outside of the infirmary when a healer had spoken ill about Will to a wounded camper. The blonde stiffened and muttered underneath his breath, and unfortunately, Percy had overheard him.

Two things happened then. Percy had attacked Will. And Will had attacked back. He didn’t know what had overcome him, but he felt good about the punch he swung. He found himself in his boss’s office, and Will tried to explain himself but somehow made things worse when he had another slight breakdown.

“I’m trying my best, I really am,” he cried, tears streaming down his face, “but then it gets too loud, everything I do is wrong and is not up to everyone’s standards. Isaac keeps saying that these things take time, but it’s been over three months, and I still don’t feel any better.”

“Will,” his superior started, but Will had cut her off.

“DON’T YOU DARE ‘WILL’ ME, I AM THE BEST HEALER IN THIS GODS DAMNED CAMP, BUT YOU DON’T TRUST ME, NOBODY DOES. NOBODY BELIEVES IN ME JUST BECAUSE I AM A SHIT FIGHTER. ITS WHY A LOT OF MY SIBLINGS ARE DEAD. I MAY NOT EXCEL AT MANY THINGS APOLLO-WISE, BUT I AM A GOOD HEALER. I AM. I am. I am. It’s the only thing I’m good at.”

He felt his superior wrap her arms around him as she tried to calm him down. She held him there as he sobbed and cried, getting snot all over her clothes. She had decided to give him an indefinite leave until he heals. Made him promise to work things through, to go and visit Isaac every day until he gets better. And Will had promised her.

He had spent a month and a half with Isaac. The first step to recovery was selling that apartment as it held some memories that Will did not want to remember. He rented a small apartment and moved there, his neighbor was told to frequently check on him. He had enough money saved up to last him a week or more before he started job hunting. Isaac had thought that customer service jobs were not the best place to work at the moment. So Will ended up doing several odd jobs around New Rome and somehow ended up becoming one of the most sought-after dog walkers. 

In this time, Will improved, he became more motivated than before. And when Isaac had deemed Will good enough to be on his own and suggested that as summer was approaching, it would perhaps be a good idea for Will to visit camp half-blood and talk to his siblings that he grew up with. Get a change of scenery and pace. Will was reluctant at first, he didn’t know how to face his sibling, mostly Kayla.

He was in camp when he learned that his mother was having a concert in New York. He didn’t bother to ask Chiron for permission to leave camp and visit his mother. He just sent her an email using the camp computer that he will visit her.

Their reunion quite the ordeal. He had hugged her and cried in her arms, murmuring apologies. He had last seen his mother before he had moved to New Rome, and they occasionally wrote letters to each other. His mother, as a singer, was constantly traveling the country and touring. He counted himself lucky whenever they were in the same city. Once they were in the privacy of her hotel room, he had broken down and told her everything. His mother, the ever kind and loving woman that she is, had offered him a place next to her, to go on tour with her if he wanted.

Will had nodded and IM’ed Isaac the next day, he told him of the plan, and the older man agreed and thought it was a good idea for Will to leave the demigod world for a while. He told Will to call him every few days. He was willing to do therapy over long distances and was going to send Will his medication once his prescription is finished. 

Will had gone on the road with his mother for the rest of the year. What he had thought was going to be just missing one semester of university turned out to be three semesters. He had never felt that happy in a long time. He had noticed that sometime in the year before he and Nico had broken up, he had become miserable in that relationship. He had taken the time to learn things about himself.

He would go out with his mother’s bandmates and road buddies, they would spend long nights singing karaoke songs at the top of his lungs even though he was terrible at it. He started having some one-night stands, it was a regular occurrence among the group. His mother told him it was part of the routine before going to her room with a guy around her shoulder. Will supposes it was weird watching your mother having a fun time and hooking up with strangers, but then one of the band members said that Naomi Solace had hooked up with Will’s dad as a one night stand after one of her shows when she was starting out but did not expect the guy to fall in love with her.

His mother was having a show in Indianapolis for new year’s eve, but there were many monsters around. He bumped into Leo Valdez, the son of Hephaestus, who had saved him and led him back to the waystation. Will had fallen in love with the place and the people there, and had talked to his mother about how he still wanted to be a doctor and that as fun as being on the road, he thinks he wants to settle down for a while.

Will had moved there and enrolled in the best local pre-med university. He took on a few extra workloads so that he could be back on track with his studies. A month in and he met a girl who was interested in him. Whenever he had hooked up with someone, he subconsciously made sure that it was a woman. He had talked to Isaac about it, and it came down to him still not being over Nico completely, and that was fine, these things take time.

Easing back into the dating scene was not as hard as Will had expected. He knew that nothing was going to be permanent, sure he would be upset about a breakup, but that would be for a week or so before moving on. At first, he was still dating girls, but through time he started dating guys once again. He and Leo became close friends and would go on double dates with the mechanic.

He was one of the first people that Leo had experimented with using the demigod safe electronic devices. It started out by being an old Nokia phone with no internet to slowly turning into a smartphone, and then Leo had managed to create a demigod safe laptop that can connect to the internet without attracting monsters. Throughout, Will had learned to never question Leo about how he managed to get his hands on some items, some of which were either super expensive or were outright illegal.

Seven years had passed, and Will felt good about himself, he had experimented with his looks and what may feel comfortable. He once tried to grow a beard. Keyword: tried. But it looked so bad on him that Leo had resulted to calling his beard face pubes. In short, Will Solace could not grow a beard no matter how hard he tried. When he let his hair grow out into soft curly locks that reached past his shoulders, Leo had called him Lucius Malfoy. Safe to say that Will shaved his head the next day.

It wasn’t just his looks; Will had experimented with everything about himself. He can finally say that he knows who he is, what he likes, and what he wants from life. He had never been more confident about himself.

He finished his studies and went back to New Rome. He had said goodbye to his family at the waystation and promised to call and visit as much as he can. He was quickly accepted into the hospital, and when he presented his idea of traveling demigod doctors and to help the demigod communities, the board approved the idea and were eager to implement it.

.

Will sighed as he rubbed his hand and looked at the ten pages he had written. Contrary to popular belief, Will actually has a neat and readable small handwriting, and he had written a lot of stuff in those pages. He looked at the time and had decided to call it a night, he had a long day ahead of him. And he didn’t know if Nico was even going to contact him or not. If the other demigod did not contact him, then he was going to mail him the letter.

He had received an IM two days later and was surprised to see Nico’s face, and Will had to guess that the other man was actually resting or was busy as well. They had agreed to meet in a bar in Ocean City in three hours, and Will was glad that it was a weekend today. He took out his letter, thankful that he actually spent the past two days rereading the letter and editing it.

He put on some jeans, a white shirt, and a green jacket, and put his 5-page speech inside his jacket and requested an Uber. It took him about an hour to reach the bar. He saw Nico standing close to the entrance and greeted him. His ex was dressed in grey pants, a brand name shirt, and a leather jacket, and strangely enough white Gucci sneakers.

_ Typical of Nico _ , he thought as he greeted the other demigod. They made their way inside and ordered some drinks before taking a seat in a quiet area where they were sure that no one will overhear their conversation. He watched as Nico took a sip of beer, “So how do you want to do this?”.

Will looked at Nico feeling slightly embarrassed as he didn’t think through how they were supposed to start. He pulled his letter from inside his jacket. He looked at Nico apologetically, “Well, I have written a lot of stuff down, and it is like several pages, so I may take a long time, how about you start first?”.

He watched Nico sigh and pull a small sheet of paper, perhaps a memo note and start talking, “I should perhaps begin when we met at half-blood hill when I bought the Athena Parthenos, and the first thing you did was order me not to use my powers and then telling me that all my feelings are invalid and that it was my fault for being ostracized, way to go taking away part of your future boyfriend’s anatomy.”

Will cringed as he nodded for Nico to continue. He talked about everything, telling Will what he had done wrong in that relationship and why it was wrong. “I agree that whole doctor’s note stuff was quite controlling and perhaps outright abusive,” Will stated, adding to Nico’s point, “But you should’ve taken care of your body and yourself in general, back then it seemed like you didn’t care if you lived and died, and that made me feel like I didn’t matter to you.”

They continued talking, and Will started reading out his letter. He felt his throat constrict at the hard parts and how he sometimes felt useless in that relationship because he was bad at fighting. How he hated himself because he hadn’t seen the world because he was confined to camp since he was nine, and if he was lucky, he visited New York for a day. How some of the things Nico would say or do made him feel incompetent and harder to connect with. 

How sometimes, being with Nico was suffocating and unbearable.

He went in great detail about when his depression started, when it had increased and became a part of who he is. How he slowly went into psychosis, the symptoms hidden under the guise of stress from a new life. How his world slowly started to crash down because he no longer remembers what it is like to be mortal. How it was hard for him to separate lies from truths, and what was real and what was just paranoia.

He felt like crying a few times but stopped himself. He talked about his experiences after the breakup. He explained to Nico how his life started to fall apart, and he was healed by Mr. D, but that was not enough. He told Nico about how he sought out a therapist in New Rome, dropped out of school, and went on the road with his mother to discover himself only to somehow end up living in Indianapolis with Leo in the waystation.

Will was shocked to learn that Leo had run into Nico several times and never mentioned the other, not even once in seven years. He was kind of thankful for that, he didn’t want his long and hard progress of recovery to go down the drain. 

“He even gave me a laptop for free, but made me pay for a phone,” Nico laughed, and Will raised an eyebrow. He knew that Nico wasn’t from this era. He wasn’t as interested in wanting to have electronic devices for himself but changed, “Laptop and Phone? for what?”

“How am I supposed to contact my mortal acquaintances or do my job?” Nico had replied, and Will felt even more confused than before, he is starting to have a hard time figuring this new Nico out.

“How would a laptop and phone help you in the mythical world? unless you want to attract monsters?” He joked in a lighthearted fashion, he was curious, but he didn’t want to cross boundaries and make Nico uncomfortable. After, all they both had agreed that Will not respecting boundaries was one of the bad things about their relationship.

Will watched as a grin stretched on Nico’s face, his eyes glinting with mischief, and Will’s heart skipped a beat because Nico looked so sexy for a second. “Little secret, I have a mortal job,” he whispered, looking around as if someone will hear him and leaned close to Will. The blond felt his heart speed in anticipation, “I am a freelance journalist.”

He felt his brain froze for a second. He heard the words right. “What?” he gasped, slightly confused. Never in his life would he connect journalists with Nico. It just didn’t add up. And that was another piece of proof to show why they didn’t work out, it seemed that Will did not know Nico as well as he thought.

“Well I have two jobs, the first is a freelance journalist where I write random articles for different newspapers and magazines, the second is I sort of run a travel blog, I post sceneries, landscapes and highlights of each place I visit, I have an Instagram and I was thinking of opening a travel office.”

Will finally processed what Nico had said and gasped in shock. He didn’t worry about seeming nosy for asking about how things had happened. He couldn’t believe what he is hearing. Nico di Angelo, son of Hades, was actually an Instagram influencer and a blogger. He was shocked to learn that after their break up, Nico had finally decided to get his GED, even though he was qualified for it before they had moved to New Rome. He was even more shocked to learn that Nico had graduated college in just three years, but he should’ve known that Nico always gave his best. 

But the English literature major gave him a whiplash, but he should’ve really expected it. Looking back, he saw that Nico was always fond of reading, and it helped that his dyslexia wasn’t as severe as most demigods. If he had been a better boyfriend, he could see how Nico could actually end up being a writer.

Somehow the lighthearted conversation took a complete turn, and they talked about their running away habits, which for some reason, ended up talking about their love lives. The thing is, Will did not feel any anger or jealousy about Nico talking about dating around and was surprised when the dark-haired man asked him if their relationship was just a ‘sexual experiment’ and if he had ruined guys for Will.

He doesn’t know why he would think that or who put that thought in his head, but Will knew that he needed to set the record straight. Well, not straight cause he isn’t, but he needed Nico to know the truth. How hard it was for him to move on because Nico was Will’s first love and first everything.

“When I started dating again, at first I couldn’t date guys because I always saw you in them and that was kind of difficult, I dated a few girls but after a few breakups I found the confidence to date other guys as well, I once even had this crush on this guy in my anatomy class and we dated for a month, the thing is he had blonde hair and blue eyes, which kind of in retrospection looks weird, we could’ve passed as siblings.”

He felt a weight lift off his chest when Nico laughed loudly. He missed that laugh, it always had brightened his day. They soon moved to play a game of pool. They started exchanging stories, somewhere outrageous, and others reminded Will of how adorable Nico could get. As they talked, curiosity got the best of Will, and he had asked Nico about what he was doing the day they ran into each other.

“Long story short, I had broken up with my boyfriend Aiden about a month ago, it was mutual, no big deal,” Nico had sighed. And Will could see from the corner of his eyes that Nico wasn’t that upset but seems to miss his ex-boyfriend if that small wistful smile was any indicator. Whoever this Aiden guy was, he seemed to really have made Nico happy, and Will feels sorry that they didn’t work out.

“Anyways, I sort of moved to Philadelphia and I’ve been living there for a few weeks, so far so great,” Nico continued with his explanation, “And then I got this job about writing up about ocean pollution and how it is affecting Ocean City and the entire area in general, and when I was searching about it, I found out that the area is a good place to include in my blog and whenever I was taking pictures, be it at the beach or at the golf courses I kept getting attacked by random monsters, so I sort of been having a long day, and I wanted to catch my breath.”

They continued talking and playing. In the end, Nico won because Will accidentally pocketed the black number 8 ball and lost the game. It started getting late, and they decided to exchange numbers to stay in contact, and Will had asked Nico for his pen names; he needed to see how good Nico was. 

Nico decided to be the epitome of being a gentleman and had escorted Will back to his hotel room. During their Uber ride, they talked in hushed tones. They exchanged stories about their adventures and romantic endeavors. Will noticed how Nico’s eyes would light up at certain things, mostly Aiden, and Will really wanted to meet this guy and thank him for everything he did for Nico.

He could feel how close they were walking next to each other, how he could simply brush their hands together, and call it an accident. They had reached Will’s door, and he shuffled to get his room keys out, “So..I guess this is goodnight,” he awkwardly stated. He wondered if it would be weird to invite Nico in, would it be giving off the wrong signals, miscommunication was always their problem.

He looked into those dark eyes and gave in to his impulses, he leaned forward and pressed a chaste kiss on Nico’s cheek. He gave Nico one of his captivating smiles, “friends?” he asked, hoping that it would make his intentions clear.

“Friends,” Nico had nodded, and Will closed the door before he does something stupid. He felt, more than heard or saw, Nico leave the corridor, and Will jumped around in his room. He was brimming with energy and happiness. It was like he was missing something, but he didn’t know it until he saw Nico again.

He went to his phone, feeling a bit giddy at the prospect of being one of the few demigods to have Nico’s number and allowed to text him, he sat for a few minutes deciding what to write and settled on something that isn’t pushy and showed that Will still cares for him as a friend.

_ – Hope you arrived safely, and don’t forget to rest and take some ambrosia and nectar. Good night. _

Will watched as his phone pinged with a reply and crashed onto bed. He really missed Nico, having his presence around was very calming and made him happy. He thought about how things will be in the future, and he hoped they don’t change. He really wanted to be friends with Nico more than anything.

He called Kayla and told her about what had transcribed in these past three days. He was thankful that they had gotten over their little issue when Will broke down the first time, and he was thankful for every time she was there when he seemed to have another mental field day.

“And what did he say about  _ it _ ?” she asked, referencing the incident that caused them to break up. He couldn’t see her, but he could imagine her sitting in her apartment after a long day practice, probably preparing to call it a night when Will had called.

“He said he didn’t blame me for saying such things,” Will began, recalling the expression Nico had given him, the heartbreak and anger when they spoke about  _ the incident _ and the words that Will had said, “but he said he will never forget them and it will take a long time for him to forgive me for that, but I’m okay with it, I honestly did not really expect him to even want to look at me after all that time.”

They had talked for a while longer before they both called it a night. And for the first time in a very long time, Will felt like he was on top of the world. As long as Nico di Angelo was in his corner, everything else will be easy to deal with. His biggest hurdle and fear turned out to be not as big as he thought. He fell asleep that night with a smile on his face.

And when Nico had shown up in New Rome several months later wearing  _ that _ jacket that Will had given him, it had made his day. Nico di Angelo was his first love, it was a love that started out pure and ended up being twisted and broken before leaving them both shattered. He picked the pieces for years until he felt whole again, then that love came back to him. It came back, not a romantic love, but a platonic love.

**The End**

**Author's Note:**

> So what do you guys think Will had said to Nico that just ended their relationship? I am leaving that up to your imagination, from my end, there were many things but let’s just say that Will tried to suicide bait Nico among many things, and I don’t know how to write that or even want to write that so I left it blank. Also, I’m not trying to justify any abusive behavior, I believe that if someone wants to correct their behavior they can, the should start by learning what they did wrong and apologize, they should never try to justify that behavior because they JUST can’t, the victim shouldn’t have to forgive or forget what they went through.
> 
> In this story, Will is going through psychosis, that may justify it, but he admits that he was wrong and is trying to fix himself. Same with Nico, he admits that he was also bad in the relationship. They apologize to each other, but if you noticed they never outright forgave each other, because that needs time and effort. Nico may never forgive will for what he said that day, he understands the circumstances but he will not use that as a justifiable excuse, and neither is will.
> 
> Part of the maturity of this fic stems from the fact that in the series, those kids are obviously traumatized and through a lot. They don’t believe that they could become adults and are forced to mature quickly. In this fic, they have a good support system and work through their trauma. It had taken Will eight years to reach where he is, and he was still wondering if he could face Nico after everything. It wasn’t like the problem was fixed overnight, he worked through it. Same with Nico, Hades provided him with some good support, I mean it's canon that after TLO and in BoO that Hades started to care about Nico, so why should he stop watching after his son. 
> 
> Nico moving cities is actually because of monsters, even his failed relationships, some were actually nice, but monsters ruin everything for Nico. The OC Aiden still keeps in touch with Nico and they sometimes hang out in the future. I’m leaving their future open-ended, if you want them to end up together again, then it’s your choice, but if you want them to be friends and have different partners, then that’s fine by me. 
> 
> Something about this relationship is that their love started out being a mix of platonic and romantic. They chose to go through the romantic route but that did not work out for them. So by the end that piece of love but they want is the platonic slice. Does that make sense?
> 
> Here are some of my headcanons that interlink with the story:  
> \- The Dionysus + Apollo older campers do therapy for other demigods at camp to help them. But none of them are actually qualified for the job so most of the counseling is actually terrible.  
> \- Nico starts wearing designer brands as he gets older just to flex on people. He only wears them at occasions.  
> \- Hades let’s Nico visit or talk to campers who died and are in Elysium, and that includes Jason.  
> \- Speaking of Jason, he is probably one of the judges of the underworld and is actually quite good at his job; Hades gave him a promotion within the first week.  
> \- Nico is Italian, which means his ancestors lived during the Roman empire, which means he might have a slight hint of roman blood, not enough to make him a legacy but just enough that he doesn’t suffer from dyslexia as much as other demigods.  
> \- We know that Hades gave Nico a zombie chauffeur sometime between TLO and Nico falling into Tartarus, Nico also has a room in the underworld, and Hades would not have an uneducated son, so you bet he has been getting tutored the whole time he was in the underworld. And when he spends time in camp half-blood after BoO, he attends classes with the other campers who wish to get an education.


End file.
